If It's Too Loud...

Photo by Phoebe Fox The more I hear Yard Act the more I enjoy them. The Leeds, UK band re-imagine Parklife- era Blur as a post punk band instead of Brit pop. So far their vocals have been much more along the lines of spoken word or ranting than actual singing. Their latest single, "Rich," has this blistering building intensity that goes in stark contrast to the cheerfulness at the beginning of the song. Very slowly the song gets angrier and drips with more and more attitude the further you get into the song. "Rich" starts off as an almost accessible song and then devolves into a much noisier and discordant one towards the end. A+. Frontman James Smith says of the new song: “ ‘Rich’ is the natural successor to ‘Payday’. That’s the end of the story right? Success! Status! Security! Except, there’s always more money to be made, and you’re deemed a failure if your life starts to head back in the direction it came from. It’s about being so lost you’re sure you know exact...

Photo by James Brown Hailing from Leeds, Yard Act are threatening to become the next huge thing out of England. The band's new single, "Payday," imagines a bizarre world where Blur skipped out on the whole Britpop thing around the time of Parklife to become an experimental post punk band that also was really into funk. Needless to say, "Payday" has a wonderfully unique sound with buzzing and swirling guitars and all sorts of odd little twists and turns. We've been late to jump on this bandwagon, so you're going to want to jump on and join us ASAP. Singer James Smith says of the new song: “ ‘Payday’ was one of the few tracks on the record we had to rebuild completely in the studio because the first demo was recorded on my computer and the hard drive corrupted. We spent about TWO hours trying to figure out that stupid keyboard part I'd put on it and couldn't remember how to play. It was boring but worth it. It's about gentrification, class feti...